Maddalenas Italian Cafe - Kelso (WA)

5 /5 Melissa Jones: UPDATE: Brian (the owner) reached out for an opportunity to correct my experience. He was very kind and understanding, explained they had changed their portion size of pasta but hadn’t changed the sauce portion but they have corrected that. The fettuccine Alfredo was MUCH better this time!! The homemade pasta is so good and the sauce was perfect! They also changed their focaccia bread to a garlic and herb and it tastes a lot better! Would definitely come back here and recommend you try it! Thank you for making it right, Brian! I REALLY wanted to like their food but unfortunately I don’t know if I’ll go back. The fresh pasta is great but I ordered the Alfredo and paid for extra sauce (I love Alfredo sauce) and the pasta was SOOO dry - bone dry! I can’t imagine what it would be like without buying extra sauce. Honestly I think they just forgot I asked for more but even if that’s true they didn’t put enough on it at all! I also paid for a side of bread, it was just bread with a tiny drizzle of olive oil, no seasoning or anything. The Caesar salad was the only thing I actually ate.

5 /5 Ryan Matthews: Absolutely blown away by this little restaurant! My order included a meatball appetizer, the chicken Alfredo pasta, and a watermelon Italian soda. All 3 were amazing, both to the eyes and to the mouth. The portions were perfect for the price and the lighting is perfect for photos. They have ample seating, so bigger groups should be able to find seating together.

5 /5 Nate Hammond: To say I was pleasantly surprised would be an understatement. We had been hearing about this place and seeing reviews. And finally decided to try it. The place looks really nice and very tastefully decorated. And the Staff was extremely pleasant and patient as I tried to wrangle my almost two year old and order it to go. I ordered several items as our family of five loves pasta. We ordered the chicken Alfredo, spaghetti and meatballs, salads and a couple of orders of bread that I wish I remembered what they were called. When I got home we all dished up and I had expectations that it was going to taste like a commercial food chain or something along those lines. I have to say the first word out of my mouth after the first bite was, wow. The second thing I tried was the bread. From an appearance perspective I thought it would be dry. I completely misjudged it. I could eat a whole loaf of that stuff! My 6 year old. Who had just eaten an hour or so before and is typically picky on anything. Took a bite of the Alfredo, smiled and then began shoveling it into his mouth as fast as he could. Sorry I know this is a fairly long review. But I don’t generally post reviews unless I really love or really dislike a place. And honestly this is a rare one that completely blew my expectations out of the water. This is one of my favorite surprises ever… and it was takeout. My family is thrilled to have this place! Keep up the good work and we will be back again very soon!

2 /5 Will: Waited to try due to all the initial bad reviews, but even after they announced adding more sauce/pasta and bread to each pasta dish the food was just not that good. We had the chicken alfredo which didn’t have much sauce or flavor and the chicken tasted and looked like it was boiled, and the Vodka Sausage Bucatini which wasn’t great either (the sauce for the bucatini was very acidic). Also, the bread on the side was pretty dry. I will say the pasta had a good texture and tasted fresh though, so I’ll give them two stars for that. This place was really hyped up, but overall pretty disappointed and won’t be back.

5 /5 Bob McKay: Grand Opening Day, and the food was perfect! I had the Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo and the wife had a Caprese salad and 3 meatballs. The marinara sauce was great, but could have used just a tad more sugar to combat the very slight bitterness. My pasta was perfect. We topped the meal off with a couple of perfect cannoli. We **WILL** be going back. Longview/Kelso really needed a good Italian food source!